King of Shaves, the shaving brand and e-commerce site, is planning to release a Facebook application in what could be the first ever brand marketing use of the social networking site in this manner. Word leaked out via Twitter and a screen shot has been posted to Flickr.
So far brands in the Uk have hung back form developing full-blown applications, preferring instead to use traditional advertising banners on the site.
Joost, the online television service from Skype and Kazaa founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, launches today. Current beta testers will now get an unlimited number of invites, after being limited to five till now. A number of leading advertisers including Coca-Cola, Nike, General Motors and Visa will start ad campaigns this month. The latest version is available for download from existing users and those invited to join. While most of their content provided is aimed at US and UK audiences, there are plans to expand to Asia and Latin America. Let’s see how far they can get with PC-based TV before some bright spark invents the Joost TV plugin.
Whatever happened to Angel Gambino, she of "MTV 2.0"? Well she's been hired by Bebo to a new position of VP-music. Bebo is interested in rivaling MySpace in the music stakes. Until January this year she was VP commercial, strategy and digital media for Viacom in the UK, where she worked across 11 channels, and was previously controller of business development and emerging platforms at the BBC. Gambino announced the move on her blog. Bebo claims to have 450,000 musicians already and last month partnered with online music retailer 7digital to allow independent artists to sell their tracks.
Over half of Second Life users are watching less TV since becoming memebers of the virtual world, according to a new report. But clearly TV advertisers had better get moving into this new world, because the report from market intelligence house GMI found that just over half (56%) of users think Second Life is a good promotional vehicle. Only 16 percent say they would not be more likely to buy or use a brand that is represented in the Internet-based virtual world
In addition twenty-four percent of respondents claim they go to Second Life to escape real life, which they are ‘not satisfied’ with, while 64 percent present themselves differently. Additional findings include:
* 45 percent give themselves a more attractive body
* 37 percent make themselves younger
* 23 percent give themselves a different nationality
* 55 percent watch less television since becoming active in Second Life
* 22 percent have more Second Life friends than real-life friends
* 29 percent feel Second Life interferes with their real-world social life
Celltick (the mobile content firm headquartered in London) is to help AIS Thailand (the largest mobile operator in Thailand) to expand its content discovery service, mLive! to reach 8 million subscribers by the end of the year. mLive! broadcasts streams of content teasers directly across the idle screen of user’s mobile phones like a screensaver, with subscribers offered “personalized content and promotions”. mLIVE! users see streams of free news headlines, sport reports, weather updates, music stories, gossip, horoscopes and games as well as prize winning trivia and quizzes directly on their idle screens. The messages appear silently only when the phone is not in use, letting users access a variety of content and data services with a two-click reaction. Sponsored content and cross media campaigns form the main content. AIS says that during its first year of operation over 40% of subscribers used mLIVE! on a monthly basis, with over 300,000 downloads a day. The service will become available for 8 million users by the end of the year and then extended to the majority of AIS users. Celltick says its services are used by 30 million subscribers around the world already and it has an R&D centre in Israel and offices in China, India, Russia and Latin America.
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Hugh Macleod, spoke about how he had worked with Thomas Mahon, bespoke Savile Row tailor, to launch English Cut.
He says having a blog was much easier to "control the conversation" than going through mainstream media – especially after being strung along by some national newspaper journalists, attempting to get media profile.
Since they launched the blog, inside 6 months he saw a 300% rise in sales.
Public Enemy’s New Wireless Order: Public Enemy (which pioneered using MP3s) is getting into wireless. On Nov. 28 the group will make the music from its new album, New Whirl Odor, available through wireless phone networks using distribution technology from privately held m-Qube. “It’s like the Internet in ’98, but with a business plan,” says Walter Leaphart, who manages Public Enemy leader Chuck D.
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